Word.ws English Dictionary

sheer

UK/ʃɪə̯/

More pronunciations (1)Fewer pronunciations

British/ʃɪː/

sheer adjective: very thin or transparent. Also the obsolete spelling of shear.

sheer: very thin or transparent
Image: kallerna, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

Adjective

sheer (comparative sheerer or more sheer, superlative sheerest or most sheer)

  1. Very thin or transparent.
    • Her light, sheer dress caught everyone’s attention.
    • “She sheathed her legs in the sheerest of the nylons that her father had brought back from the Continent, and slipped her feet into the toeless, high-heeled shoes of black suède.”1954, Alexander Alderson, chapter 17, in The Subtle Minotaur
  2. (obsolete) Pure in composition; unmixed; unadulterated.
    • If she say I am not fourteen pence on the score for sheer ale, score me up for the lying’st knave in Christendom.c. 1590–1592 (date written), William Shakespeare, “The Taming of the Shrew”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies […] (First Folio), London: […] Isaac Iaggard, and Ed[ward]...
    • Thou sheer, immaculate and silver fountain, / From when this stream through muddy passages / Hath held his current and defiled himself!1595 December 9 (first known performance), William Shakespeare, “The Life and Death of King Richard the Second”, in Mr. William Shakespeares Comedies, Histories, & Tragedies: Published According to...
    Synonyms:
    pure, undiluted
  3. (broadly) Downright; complete; pure.
    • I think it is sheer genius to invent such a thing.
    • This poem is sheer nonsense.
  4. Used to emphasize the amount or degree of something.
    • The army's sheer size made it impossible to resist.
    • Perhaps as startling as the sheer toll was the devastation to some of the state’s well-known locales. Boardwalks along the beach in Seaside Heights, Belmar and other towns on the Jersey Shore were blown away. Amusement parks, arcades and restaurants all but vanished. Bridges to barrier islands...2012 October 31, David M. Halbfinger, “New Jersey Reels From Storm's Thrashing”, in New York Times, retrieved 20 Sep 2021
  5. Very steep; almost vertical or perpendicular.
    • It was a sheer drop of 180 feet.

Adverb

sheer (comparative more sheer, superlative most sheer)

  1. (archaic) Clean; completely; at once.
    • Hector the ashen lance of Ajax smote / With his broad faulchion, at the nether end, / And lopp’d it sheer.1791, William Cowper, The Iliad of Homer, translation of original by Homer, Book XVI
    • Swift into the dark stream at once he fell, / As the red star at once falls swift and sheer / From sky to sea1888, Francis Hastings Doyle, “Hylas”, in The Return of the Guards: And Other Poems, translation of original by Theocritus

Noun (1)

sheer (plural sheers)

  1. A sheer curtain or fabric.
    • Use sheers to maximize natural light.
    • Lightweight, tightly woven silkies, sheers, lingerie1992, Tammy Young, Naomi Baker, Serged Garments in Minutes, page 22

Noun (2)

sheer (plural sheers)

  1. The curve of the main deck or gunwale from bow to stern.
  2. An abrupt swerve from the course of a ship.

Verb

sheer (third-person singular simple present sheers, present participle sheering, simple past and past participle sheered)

  1. To swerve from a course.
    • I sheered her well inshore—the water being deepest near the bank, as the sounding–pole informed me.1899 March, Joseph Conrad, “The Heart of Darkness”, in Blackwood’s Edinburgh Magazine, volume CLXV, number MI, New York, N.Y.: The Leonard Scott Publishing Company, […], →OCLC, part II
    • Seydlitz correctly identifies the larger shell splashes as coming from the two "large light cruisers" at the rear, and takes aim. Moments later, Courageous sheers out of line, smoke and steam venting through a massive hole in her side, the shells having blasted right through whatever excuse for...2018 October 17, Drachinifel, 15:10 from the start, in Last Ride of the High Seas Fleet - Battle of Texel 1918, archived from the original on 04 Aug 2022

Proper noun capitalized: Sheer

Sheer (plural Sheers)

  1. A surname.

Also used as

sheer is also the obsolete spelling of shear.

sheer meaning in Hindi, Nepali and Arabic

sheer in Hindi

सरासर

sheer in Nepali

सरासर

sheer in Arabic

very thin or transparent
شَفَّاف šaffāf
downright; complete
شَدِيْد šadīd

Examples of sheer in a sentence

  • She was cunningly dressed in a black, sheer gown with gold ornaments showing her figure to perfection.1966, James Workman, The Mad Emperor, Melbourne, Sydney: Scripts, page 53:
  • And if the arts of humbleness failed him, he overcame you by sheer impudence.1918, W[illiam] B[abington] Maxwell, chapter II, in The Mirror and the Lamp, Indianapolis, Ind.: The Bobbs-Merrill Company, →OCLC:
  • Cycling's complex etiquette contains an unwritten rule that riders in contention for a race win should not be penalised for sheer misfortune.2012 July 15, Richard Williams, “Tour de France 2012: Carpet tacks cannot force Bradley Wiggins off track”, in The Guardian:
  • Perhaps as startling as the sheer toll was the devastation to some of the state’s well-known locales.2012 October 31, David M. Halbfinger, “New Jersey Reels From Storm's Thrashing”, in New York Times, retrieved 20 Sep 2021:

All 40 example sentences with sheer

Synonyms of sheer

30 more synonymsFewer synonyms

Antonyms

All synonyms and antonyms of sheer

Forms of sheer

Adjective
comparativesheerer
comparativemore sheer
superlativesheerest
superlativemost sheer
Adverb
comparativemore sheer
superlativemost sheer
Noun
pluralsheers
Verb
third-person singular presentsheers
present participlesheering
past participlesheered
pastsheered
Proper noun
pluralSheers

Origin of sheer

From Middle English shere, scheere, schere, skere, from Old English sċǣre (“pure, sheer; shining, clear”), from Proto-Germanic *skairiz; supplanted the semantically close shire (dialectal), from Middle English schyre, schire, shire, shir, from Old English sċīr (“clear, bright; brilliant, gleaming, shining, splendid, resplendent; pure”), beside which existed Middle English skyr, from Old Norse skírr (“pure, bright, clear”), both from Proto-Germanic *skīriz (“pure, sheer”), from Proto-Indo-European *(s)ḱeh₁y- (“luster, gloss, shadow”). Cognate with Danish skær, German schier (“sheer”), German Low German schier (“sheer, pure, unadulterated”; “completely, almost”), Dutch schier (“almost”), Gothic 𐍃𐌺𐌴𐌹𐍂𐍃 (skeirs, “clear, lucid”). Outside Germanic, cognate to Albanian hir (“grace, beauty; goodwill”).

Perhaps from Dutch scheren (“to move aside, skim”); see also shear.

Words formed from sheer

Phrases with sheer

Words that rhyme with sheer

48 more rhymesFewer rhymes

Questions about sheer

What does sheer mean?
Sheer means very thin or transparent.
What is sheer in Hindi?
Sheer in Hindi is सरासर. See Sheer meaning in Hindi.
How do you use sheer in a sentence?
She was cunningly dressed in a black, sheer gown with gold ornaments showing her figure to perfection.
What part of speech is sheer?
Sheer can be an adjective, an adverb, a noun or a verb.
How do you pronounce sheer?
Sheer is pronounced /ʃɪə̯/ (UK).

Words near sheer in the dictionary

  1. Sheepy Magna
  2. Sheepy Parva
  3. sheepyard
  4. sheepyards
  5. Sheepys
  6. sheer
  7. sheer hulk
  8. sheer hulks
  9. sheer khorma
  10. sheer khurma
  11. Sheer Thursday

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: sheer (page history and authors); Sheer (page history and authors); sheer (Hindi, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license); sheer (Nepali, IndicTrans2 machine translation) (model and license). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

Last updated:

Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: en-au-sheer.ogg, en-us-sheer.ogg.

Cite this entry: “sheer.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/sheer. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.